(FILES) In this file photo taken on September 20, 2013 actor Kevin Spacey attends the BAFTA LA TV Tea 2013 presented by BBC America and Audi held at the SLS Hotel Beverly Hills, California. - Disgraced US movie star Kevin Spacey will have to pay almost $31 million to the production company that made the series "House of Cards" in which he starred until he was fired over allegations of sexual harassment, according to legal documents made public November 22, 2021. (Photo by Jason MERRITT / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / AFP)
Kevin Spacey has been ordered to pay $31 million to the producers of Netflix’s ‘House of Cards’ after he was fired from the series following alleged s3xual misconduct behind the scenes.
According to reports by PEOPLE, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mel Red Recana on Thursday ordered the actor, 63, to pay $29.5 million in damages and an additional $1.5 million in attorney’s fees and costs.
‘House of Cards’ producer MRC severed ties with Spacey in 2017, following multiple allegations of s3xually predatory behavior against the actor. The organization began an investigation after allegations arose that Spacey had s3xually assaulted and preyed upon young men, including a production assistant on the series.
Spacey was then ordered to pay the studio in 2020 for breach of contract after violating the company’s s3xual harassment policy. At the time, MRC claimed Spacey cost them millions in lost profits after his misconduct forced them to remove him from the series and cut the sixth season of House of Cards down by five episodes.
The actor’s lawyers later filed an opposition, asking the court to set the motion aside. “The truth is that while Spacey participated in a pervasive on-set culture that was filled with s3xual innuendoes, jokes, and innocent horseplay, he never s3xually harassed anyone,” the opposition read.
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Document obtained by PEOPLE read, “In fact, as the evidence established and the Arbitrator recognized in the Award, the few times Spacey was told that his conduct made someone feel uncomfortable or was in any way unwanted, he stopped.”
The arbitration award was quietly won by MCR in 2020 and came to light in November 2021 when MRC filed a petition in civil court to confirm the award. Though the 2020 ruling found MCR had a right to the millions, which Spacey and his companies M. Profitt Productions and Trigger Street Productions must pay, per the arbitrator’s findings, lawyers for the disgraced actor disagreed.
They cited that external allegations against Spacey couldn’t be considered in the proceedings as Netflix was unaware of many of the allegations at the time they decided to cut him from the show.
“As the Arbitrator recognized, the reduction in episodes was a foregone conclusion once Netflix dictated to Petitioners that Spacey could not and would not be a part of Season 6,” the attorneys wrote. “But what the Arbitrator ignored is that the conduct he found to be in breach of the Agreements was not even known by Netflix at the time it made this decision. In other words, the breaches found by the Arbitrator could not have been related to Petitioners’ damages because those damages had already been caused by the time the breaching conduct was known.”
